Mendocino County Today: Saturday, Sep. 2, 2017

• Record Heat
• Public Records
• Little Dog
• Fires
• Peace Man
• Gun Shots
• AV Graduate
• Marco Radio
• Pearson Mistrial
• Phillips Guilty
• Government
• Redwood Bummer
• Yesterday's Catch
• Hurricane Harvey
• Highspeed Rail
• Climate Change
• Downtown Characters
• Not Guilty
• Gas Shortage
• Houston
• Laughter
• Watkins Memoir
• Wood Die-in
• Cannabis Hour
• Actors Workshop
• Dixieland Dance

LOOKS LIKE NORCAL TEMPERATURES set records all over the place on Friday. Boonville reached a nearly unheard of 112 at about 3pm which was about the same high temperature as Ukiah, not the usual few degrees lower than Ukiah. Temps even got over 100 in some parts of San Francisco on Friday. Gualala reached a very high 87. Albion got up near 80 and even Westport got up to about 80 in mid-afternoon. Willits reached a high of 102. Parts of the East bay got up to 110 or so. Which tells us that the heat was coming up from the southeast.

“ALL-TIME RECORD high temperature broken in San Francisco. 104 degrees as of 2:43 p.m. PDT,” the National Weather Service reported on Twitter. “Records for downtown San Francisco, California date back to June of 1874.”

Berkeley’s official recording station, reported a temperature of 107, eclipsing the record of 106 set Sept. 16, 1913.

The Sonoma County Airport in Santa Rosa reported a high of 109, equaling its all-time high, set in 1944.

IT WAS SO HOT in Marin County on Friday that fire officials were warning of fires caused by almost any debris like tin, glass, etc.

CLIMATE CHANGE? According to a post in the San Jose Mercury News: “Not exactly, say scientists. Heat waves, droughts and hurricanes like Harvey, which brought historic floods to Texas in recent days, have always been part of the weather in the United States. But climate change — the steady warming of the Earth from the burning of fossil fuels, which traps heat in the atmosphere — is making them worse.  And brutally hot weather like this weekend’s heat wave is almost certain to become more commonplace in the coming decades.”

WE’RE DUE FOR ANOTHER HOT ONE ON SATURDAY before temps start declining toward normal summer heat on Sunday.

ILLEGAL POLICY & PRACTICE IN UKIAH

TO: City of Ukiah, Mayor Brown & Council Members

300 Seminary Avenue, Ukiah Ca. 95482

On 8-30-2017 I made a verbal request to see public records at the City of Ukiah main office, I was given a form "Public Records Information Request." I informed the staff person that the request was not allowed or legal under the California Public Records Act. She stated that I must complete the form to be able to see the Records that she had. (She was polite but firm.)  I completed the form under protest and viewed the file, paid for the  copies I needed and went on my way. The City of Ukiah has an illegal policy and practice in place, requiring written request for Public Records.  The Act plainly does not require a written request. This should be  made very clear at the front desk. I would hope the City Council  would discontinue this illegal practice forthwith, by taking action at the next City Council meeting.

Lee Howard, Ukiah

LITTLE DOG SAYS, “Grandad told me when it got real hot, his people would fry an egg on the sidewalk. Frying that egg was something of a family tradition. Well, guess what? When it hit 112 in Boonville today, we fried an egg right in our parking lot!”

MILLER FIRE & SPY ROCK FIRES: UPDATES IN WORDS & PHOTOS

by Kym Kemp

Yesterday, several fires broke out in Southern Humboldt and Northern Mendocino. The two of the larger blazes were the Miller Fire southwest of Harris and the Rock Fire on Spyrock Road.

Both fires are now either controlled or rapidly coming under control. The Spyrock was stopped yesterday and the Miller is now with better mapping believed to be 40 acres and was 40% contained as of 7:30 a.m.

Video showing how the fire trucks, which had raced down a one lane dirt road, stood toe to toe with the flames and beat them back.

(Video at http://kymkemp.com/2017/09/01/miller-creek-and-spy-rock-fires-updates-in-words-and-photos/)

Alexis Anderson captured the following images from the Rock Fire in Mendocino County which burned two double wide mobile homes and did extensive damage to a shop building, according to Caltrans.

(Courtesy Redheaded Blackbelt/KymKemp.com)

See Phil Ebert’s Photo. Who is that guy. He sure looks familiar…

OCCUPY MENDOCINO CELEBRATES INTERNATIONAL PEACE DAY

International Peace Day is celebrated annually on September 21st. For the last several years, Occupy Mendocino has recognized local peace advocates for their work at a ceremony in the Peace Garden at the FB Senior Center. In the past, we have honored Howard Ennis, Zac Zachary, and Women in Black. This year, we are proud to recognize Phil Ebert.

You’ve seen Phil on Highway One outside Caspar. You may have waved and honked as you drove past him. You may have wondered why, for almost fifteen years now, every Sunday from 11-1, rain or shine, summer or winter, Phil has stood on the east side of the highway surrounded by peace flags.

Phil Ebert hails from a military family. His father and three brothers were all in the military. His dad spent 33 years in the Marines and was a Veteran of three wars. His older brother was Corpsman who spent 34 years in the Navy. His two younger brothers were also Corpsmen in the Navy, and Phil enlisted in the Navy during the Vietnamese War, hoping to make a career for himself in the military. After losing an eye and a hand to a hand grenade, Phil reflected on what he’d seen in Vietnam during his protracted convalescence. The destruction, the death of children, the horror, the madness of war transformed Phil into an advocate for peace.

I talked to Phil on a recent Sunday afternoon as cars and bikes sped by, drivers honking and flashing peace signs, and I asked him if he’s had any negative reactions. He said he occasionally gets the finger and responds by waving his stump at the driver. I asked why he’s worked for peace week after week, year after year, and he told me he hopes to convince people there’s a better alternative than war. “Besides,” he said, “it’s fun. When little kids lean out the window of their parent’s car and flash a peace sign back at me, it lifts my spirit and energizes me.”

He invites everybody to join him.

Have your spirit lifted in these dark days by joining us for snacks and songs as we celebrate Phil Ebert, Mendocino’s Peace Man, from 1:30-3 p.m., on Thursday, September 21st, in the Peace Garden adjoining the Senior Center on Harold St. in Fort Bragg.

For more information, contact john@cypresshouse.com

THE AVA'S NEIGHBORHOOD:

Four successive gun shots from very nearby had us jumping at exactly 10:37pm Thursday night, a work night, with shouting in Spanish, all of it against a sound track of bad music played at top decibel. Pregnant woman, toddlers, young children, respectable old ladies all live on the property. People are very unhappy about it because it's not the first time. Wild gun fire is never a good thing, but doubly bad in the context of a neighborhood of working people.

BRIAN HERNANDEZ, class of 2017 AV High School honors grad. Brian has received a scholarship from the FFA as well as a Robert Mailer Anderson scholarship to attend UC Davis starting in September. Hernandez plans to enter UC's viticulture and enology program and pursue a career in the wine industry. Brian’s father Juventino Hernandez is a long-time vineyard crew leader with a local vineyard management company. To the best of our knowledge he is the first AV High grad to enter UC Davis’s viticulture and enology program even though the wine industry is AV’s main crop and employer. Hernandez began FFA when he was a tenth grader and has raised livestock — mostly chickens and goats — for entries into the Redwood Empire Fair and the Mendocino County Fair. He now has a prize Boer Goat which he raised on all-organic feed and is now “market ready” at 75 pounds. Very smart, pleasant young man whose first year at Davis will be slightly more enhanced if his prize goat can be sold before classes begin. Brian can be reached at 707-380-5777

MEMO OF THE AIR: GOOD NIGHT RADIO FRIDAY NIGHT!

jcgblat wrote (Coast Listserve):

102 degrees, 8% humidity in the shade at the dirt end of Mitchell Creek Drive.

Marco McClean:

3:30, 109 in Cotati. 120 in the car, but that's as high as the dollar-store thermometer goes. A good trick: work in zoris, loose undershorts and a t-shirt that you periodically soak in the sink, with a fan blowing at you. When it's unusually hot and your desktop computer is unusually slow, that's a good indication to open the case and (gently) toothbrush and blow the felt blanket of dust from the various heatsinks where it gathers, like the one on the CPU. When you put it all back together, make sure you don't pinch any wires in the wrong place. You can short a cooling fan out, or something, and cause more trouble than you fix.

* * *

IN OTHER NEWS: Tonight I'll be doing my show by live remote from Juanita's place, not from the KNYO storefront in Fort Bragg, so if you want to come in and play your musical instrument(s) or talk about your project, or whatever, make that Friday next week when I'll be in Fort Bragg.* I generally go back and forth; one week here, one week there.

It's 325 N. Franklin (next to the Tip Top bar). Just meander in any time after 9pm (Friday, next week), head for the lighted room at the back and get my attention away from whatever I'm doing, and we'll go forward.

(If you ever write something you want read aloud on the air, email it to me any time during the week and I'll do that. The deadline is always around 5:30 or 6pm the night of the show, so there there's still a couple of hours tonight. Plenty of time.)

Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio. Every Friday, 9pm to about 4am on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg, including midnight to 3am 105.1fm KMEC-LP Ukiah. And also there and anywhere else via http://knyo.org or http://TuneIn.com

*(Or contact Bob Young <bobb@poetworld.net> and get your own regular airtime on KNYO, to do a show entirely of own whimsical devising, and never need to depend on me at all. Either way, it's easy and fun and there's zero pressure.)

Marco McClean
memo@mcn.org
http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

FROM THE DA'S OFFICE: A Superior Court jury returned from its deliberations today only to announce that they were deadlocked and could not agree on verdicts. A mistrial was eventually declared and the jury was thanked and excused.

The four-day trial involved two separate counts of felony vandalism filed against Adam Leroy Pearson, age 36, of Ukiah. Vandalism may be charged as a felony at the discretion of the District Attorney if the damage inflicted exceeds $400 per incident. In this trial, the high valuation element was proven beyond all doubt by a stipulation of the parties.

After the mistrial was declared the Court made inquiry and the jury foreperson disclosed that the jury was hung 10 to 2 for guilt on Count 1, and 7 to 5 for guilty on Count 2. The parties will return to court on September 6th for further discussions regarding possible resolution of the charges without the need for a second trial or, if that cannot be achieved, for setting the date for retrial before a new jury.

The attorney who presented the People's evidence at this week's trial was Deputy District Attorney Luke Oakley. The investigating law enforcement agency was the Ukiah Police Department. The judge who presided over the proceedings was Mendocino County Superior Court Judge John Behnke.

A SUPERIOR COURT JURY returned from its deliberations late this afternoon with guilty verdicts against Justin Everett Phillips, age 20, of Willits.

Defendant Phillips was accused of driving the truck that ran down and caused the death of Donald Wagner on Center Valley Road in Willits on December 8, 2015. He was also accused of having left the victim to die by not stopping to provide first aid or making a call for help.

The jury returned to the courtroom with the following guilty verdicts -- Count One: vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence, a felony, along with a true finding on an allegation that the defendant had fled the scene of a crime causing bodily injury; Count Two: leaving the scene of an accident where serious bodily injury has been inflicted, a felony; and Count Three: engaging in a speed contest causing serious bodily injury, a felony. The defendant was also found guilty of two misdemeanors — reckless driving causing bodily injury and resisting arrest.

After the jury was thanked and excused the matter was put over to this Friday morning at 9 o'clock for setting a future court date for pronouncement and imposition of sentence. A referral to the Adult Probation Department for a background study and sentencing recommendation may be delayed until the conclusion of a filed second felony matter currently set for trial on September 11th against the same defendant.

The attorney who has been directing the prosecution of this case and who presented the evidence to the jury was Assistant District Attorney Rick Welsh. The law enforcement agencies involved in the investigation of the crimes mentioned were the California Highway Patrol, the California Department of Justice crime laboratories in Eureka and Redding, and the District Attorney's own investigators. The judge who presided over the six-day trial was retired Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Leonard LeCasse.

Original Sheriff’s Press Release:

On November 2, 2016 at approximately 2:58 PM a Mendocino County Sheriff's Office Deputy conducted a traffic stop of a vehicle for failing to properly stop at a posted stop sign near the intersection of West Commercial Street and Main Street In Willits. As the Deputy approached the vehicle on foot the driver, later identified as Justin Phillips, 19, of Willits, sped away. The Deputy returned to his patrol vehicle and began pursuing Phillips. Phillips fled North onto Main Street and continued North onto Highway 101, reaching speeds over 100 MPH. Phillips ultimately lost control of his vehicle in the 29000 block of North Highway 101, crashing the vehicle into a tree. Phillips was transported by ambulance to a local hospital for treatment of injuries sustained during the crash and one of his two passengers was later transported via air ambulance to another hospital for medical treatment. Phillips was released from a local hospital on November 5, 2016 and arrested for Felony Evading A Peace Officer Causing Injury or Death. Phillips was booked into the Mendocino County Jail where he was held on $100,000 bail.

I BELIEVE THAT PEOPLE have a right to decide their own destinies.  People own themselves.  I also believe that, in a democracy, government exists because (and only so long as) individual citizens give it a "temporary license to exist" --- in exchange for a promise that it will behave itself.  In a democracy, you own the government, it doesn't own you.

— Frank Zappa, 1989; from "The Real Frank Zappa Book"

REDWOOD BUMMER

by Scott M. Peterson

YOU’VE PROBABLY HEARD the story — courageous Albion women save Mother Earth from the timber industry. You’re likely to know the story tellers as well — Beth Bosk and Zia Cattalini. And perhaps a tale or two about ‘La Tigresa’ — a bare-breasted protester named Dona Nieto who stopped logging dead in its tracks. What you haven’t heard may be a surprise. That — as time has unfolded — it all turned out to be the other way ‘round.

THE ROOTS of this story begin at the Registry of Charitable Trusts in Sacramento. With a nonprofit called ‘Friends of the Enchanted Meadow’ — FOEM — and a series of emails between me and Ms. Bosk. Nonprofits in the Emerald Triangle are my main area of interest. Especially those with phony Federal Employer Identification Numbers like the Coastal Land Trust. Even more so when nonprofits like that suddenly disappear — like the Coastal Land Trust did.

BEFORE THAT DISAPPEARANCE, the Coastal Land Trust transferred a good sized chunk of Albion River bottomland to FOEM. The date of that transfer was December 31, 2014, the value was $48,570 and the method of determining that value was “Cost Basis.” Then the Coastal Land Trust went bye-bye. According to an FOEM filing for that year, the amount received was actually twenty times less. But the following year, it all disappeared. The exact loss was $146,319. In one year, over one-third of FOEM’s assets just fucking vanished. Poof.

FOEM’S WEBSITE has an email address on it. It’s info@friendsofenchantedmeadow.org. It identifies Ms. Cattalini as the head honcho there as well. So I dropped her an email to see what happened to all those assets. Crickets. Leaving me to contact Ms. Bosk with the same inquiry. That’s when all hell broke loose.

BOSK INFORMED me that FOEM has no assets whatsoever. None. And that anyone who says otherwise is “full of crap.” That didn’t seem like a very nice thing to say about Ms. Cattalini. Especially since she’d declared — under penalty of perjury — $396,828 in FOEM assets on May 13, 2015. So I asked Ms. Bosk if Ms. Cattalini was “full or crap” — or if she was held to a different standard. What came next surprised me.

“THAT $396,828 does not represent a slush fund,” Bosk told me. Which is funny because in a previous statement she insisted on having “no first hand knowledge of [FOEM] finances.” Ms. Bosk went on to say that FOEM’s only assets were three “sacred” land tracts. But didn’t seem concerned that a third of them — or which third — had been lost. Bosk went on to promise that if I published anything unflattering about Ms. Cattalini, that she’d “help her seek redress.” She clarified that statement in a later email. “I’m not threatening to sue you,” she wrote. “I am offering you the opportunity to hear a longer story.” Which — if you’ve ever listened to Beth Bosk — is worse than being sued.

ASSUMING THAT Ms. Bosk’s listening skills are up to her fondness for storytelling, she might be interested in other perspectives on Redwood Summer. Particularly one from somebody I’ve known for a long, long time — a logger named Jerry Philbrick.

LOGGING RANKS as the most dangerous job in the country. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 91.3 deaths per 100,000 workers back in 2013. Mr. Philbrick ran Philbrick Logging for sixty years and never lost a man. The closest he came was in 1974 at Gulch Eleven on the Ten Mile River. Bob Defer and Bill Reed were falling timber on GP property then. Philbrick had just cut a road in with a bulldozer to get the logs out. Reed dropped a redwood on top of a madrone tree, breaking the madrone in half. While Reed was bucking the redwood into logs, the standing half of the madrone fell on him. “Bob Defer noticed that Bill’s chainsaw wasn’t making any noise,” Philbrick recalled. “So he yelled for him and couldn’t get an answer. That’s when he found him all busted up.”

PHILBRICK told me it was the road that saved Reed’s life. They were able to get a truck from the landing to him pretty quickly. “When the ambulance showed up at the landing, Bill was already turning blue,” Jerry told me. “He’d never have made it without that road.” That’s what started the Enchanted Meadow logging protests in 1987 — a road.

BETH MICHELLE BOSK was born on May 4, 1938. That’s according to Mendocino County Clerk records. Her original voter registration there is dated July 28, 1997. Bosk has an claims — was nearly born in a Cleveland jail. That account dovetails with hers and Mr. Philbrick’s recollection of coaching one of them on the Mendocino High School Football team.

PHILBRICK COACHED me there as well. He always — and I mean always — showed up to football games with a super eight movie camera. Filming both junior varsity and varsity contests from beginning to end. That was in addition to running a logging business. Why? “I really enjoyed watching young players improve,” Philbrick told me. “Especially when they moved from junior varsity to varsity.” Philbrick told me it wasn’t about winning at all. It was all about learning. And thanks to Jerry, our varsity team won a Northwestern League pennant in 1970.

JERRY’S PUSHING EIGHTY now, but his memory’s pretty darned good. So I asked if he ever remembered Beth Bosk doing anything like that. He couldn’t. What about waiting tables, stocking shelves or working a cash register? Negative. Did she ever apply for a job at his company? No. Did he ever meet her son’s father? “I might have,” Philbrick said. “But it could’ve been his stepfather. I’m not sure.”

ONE THING Philbrick remembers for certain. And that was a zero tolerance policy for drugs and alcohol on the job. Bosk published a piece accusing Philbrick and several employees of being “skunk drunk” at a weekday Fort Bragg vigil for Judy Bari in 1990. Philbrick denies that flatly. Did he ever smell pot at a timber protest? "Sure,” he told me. “I also smelled patchouli oil there — the stuff they used to cover it up.”

MONKEYWRENCHING was a big problem for Philbrick back then. A half-million dollar yarder of his up on High Chute Ridge got torched around 1990. “Cal Fire investigated that and found it was arson,” Philbrick said. “It was fairly close to a trespass marijuana patch. We left the garden alone, but figured it was the grower that burned up the yarder to keep us away. It was a total loss.” Philbrick had a similar problem in Alpine Gulch on the Noyo. Where somebody took a hacksaw to a haul-back line for another of his yarders there. Why? “There was a marijuana garden nearby,” he said.

AT NO POINT in our interview did Jerry try to direct my story one way or the other. And unlike Beth Bosk, he never threatened me with “redress” over anything. If anything, he shared a healthy disdain for lopsided lectures. “I went to a meeting in Willits long ago,” he told me. ‘Judi Bari was there. One Earth First! guy was dominating the whole thing. So I got mad and spoke up. If anybody damages my equipment or hurts my employees — the shit’s gonna hit the fan.” Philbrick told me that some took that as a veiled threat — but not Bari. “She told me I was a stand-up guy,” Philbrick said.

THE CONNECTION between logging protesters and trespass marijuana growers was obvious to me. Wouldn’t pot farmers have a vested interest in keeping loggers away? “That did cross my mind,” Philbrick said. Income inequality is another issue. Topnotch fallers maxed out at $40,000 a year. And they worked for scale. Meaning that logging protests took money right out of their pockets. While their outlaw counterparts made ten times that amount with plenty of free time to protest. Did Philbrick’s workers ever complain about that? “No,” Jerry told me. “They didn’t.”

BOSK’S CLAIM TO FAME is a single publication called “New Settler Interview” and has been promoted as bi-monthly. She also had a radio show on KZYX, which is now bi-never. One interviewee is an accomplished author who got miffed at Bosk’s literacy lapse. Apparently the queen of passive aggression — Bosk — substituted the word anecdote for the word antidote in one such interview. When the contributor asked Bosk to make a correction, Bosk refused. Chastising the writer for her “feet of clay.” The writer found that response unsettling — and stopped playing ball. Today Bosk’s publishing is pretty much limited to bi-Facebook where she boasts a whopping sixty followers.

CLAUDIA CATTALINI was born on July 13, 1952 according to Mendocino County voter rolls. Her original registration date there is April 18, 1992. But according to her online bio, she moved here in 1972. Caretaking her aunt’s “abandoned” property. Living “in a little shell of a cabin surrounded by forest and pygmy prairie and huckleberries.” Right. Just like Walden Pond — but hemmed in by acres of dope. Mendocino Superior Court records reveal that Ms. Cattalini was named in six legal actions between 1990 and 1994. Four of them as “Plaintiff Pro Per” — meaning a lawyer with a fool for a client.

ONE OF THOSE LAWSUITS was against a Mendocino midwife named Carla Stange. According to Ms. Stange’s website, she’s delivered over 1,000 babies in her 20-year career as a Certified Nurse Midwife. Some of them were delivered alive — some weren’t. One of them — as suggested by Ms. Cattalini’s website — was hers. On that website, Claudia blames a lawsuit against her for the death of her child. That lawsuit had been filed by Louisiana Pacific — LP — against Cattalini, Bosk and others for trespassing on the timberland LP was trying to bulldoze a road on. Just like the one Jerry Philbrick had done at Gulch Eleven on the Ten Mile River back in 1974. The road that saved Bill Reed’s life.

THE DECEASED CHILD was a baby girl named T’ocha. Born “on the land” — meaning not in a hospital. The father isn’t mentioned. Okay. Where I come from — which is here — the birth of any child involves four people. The mother. The father. The doctor. And the baby. The child isn’t named until it’s born alive. Which is generally with a doctor present. Ms. Cattalini apparently chose to bypass these mere formalities and squeeze the lifeless baby out onto the floor of a tipi. Fine.

HOME BIRTH is a fringe practice — according to the New York Times. Little was known just how fringe that was until lately. When the New York Times reported the death rate for home births was seven times greater than babies delivered in a hospital. But Cattalini obviously doesn’t read the New York Times. Fair enough. So what does she read?

IT’S NOT THE LAW — that’s pretty obvious. She walked her pregnant self onto commercial timberland like she owned it. And then challenged the would-be oppressors to mess with her. Like Al Qaeda — only the suicide vest was strapped to an expectant mother.

T’OCHA’S DEATH is no greater — or lesser — than that of anyone who perishes in a Timber Production Zone. Also known as a TPZ. While Philbrick’s safety record sparkled, the one for Earth First! sure the hell didn’t. David ‘Gypsy’ Chain is a protester who died in 1998 when faller A.E. Ammons dropped a redwood tree on him near Redway. Hello. Watch a YouTube video of somebody falling a redwood tree with the sound turned up all the way. Then tell me where you’d want to be. Inside a TPZ — or outside.

THEN WE HAVE the issue of tree spiking. Where protesters drive steel rods at precise angles and locations into redwood trees to — well — injure timber workers. That practice was perfected by an Earth First! co-founder named Dave Foreman. Judi Bari of Earth First! rejected that practice. But not Beth Bosk. In a 1990 interview, she can be seen goading Bari into accepting it. “Spike a Tree for Jesus,” Bosk chanted in a 1990 interview. Bari never took the bait. Immediately renouncing tree spiking. But not before somebody got hurt over it.

GEORGE ALEXANDER worked as a sawyer at the Cloverdale sawmill three years before. He was a third-generation mill worker there — but not for long. “It was May 1987,” the Washington Post reported. “And Alexander was 23. He was nearly three feet away when the log hit his saw and the saw blade exploded. One half of the blade stuck in the log. The other half hit Alexander in the head, tearing through his safety helmet and face shield. His face was slashed from eye to chin. His teeth were smashed and his jaw was cut in half.”

THE TIMING OF THAT ACCIDENT matches perfectly with Cattalini’s memoir. Saw logs from the Mendocino Coast were transported regularly to the sawmill at Cloverdale. The ones from Albion went through Pardini Logging in Boonville. Jerry gave me Mancher Robert Pardini’s phone number to check it out. So I did.

ROBERT PARDINI’S a carefully spoken man. To say otherwise would be a disservice to everyone. He remembered Enchanted Meadow as something he’d rather forget. But wanted to think it over for a couple of days and then get back to me. Deal.

IN THE MEANTIME, I took a gander at FOEM’s website. To see what the drum-circle people have to show for 25 years of old growth forest preservation. Versus my humble abode — to compare what one 64-year old man has done in a fraction of that time. Well, I don’t have a website — but I’ve got a trail. Something that snakes its way through redwoods just as old as the ones at Enchanted Meadow. And it got done for a fraction of the price — without a 501(c)(3) nonprofit money laundry.

IN THE SPRING of 1989, LP filed two Timber Harvest Plans — also known as THPs — for property they owned on the north side of the Albion River in the area between Duck Pond Gulch and the boom. The lumber market was at an all-time high then — as were marijuana prices. Outdoor skunk was fetching upwards of $5,000 a pound. Something had to give. Naturally it was the loggers.

BOSK & CATTALINI tied them up in court first. Starting with a lawsuit against the California Department of Forestry on behalf of FOEM. That was followed by another lawsuit. And another. In May of 1992 a marathon event took place there as a hundred or so fired-up protesters occupied LP’s property. Then LP did the unthinkable — they sued. So Bosk & Cattalini sued them back under the premise that trespassing on private property is somehow protected by the US Constitution. As usual, they represented themselves. What followed was entirely predictable.

BOSK HAD BEEN egging Judi Bari on for a long time. While Cattalini was the main organizer for the massive protest. So LP hit them with everything they had. “The legal documents I received were about the size of a cord of wood,” Cattalini wrote. “It became a living nightmare.” Imagine that.

LIKE REDWOOD SIDING, LP’s lawsuit against Bosk & Cattalini was cut and dried. When — and not if — they lost, they’d be liable for lost wages and legal fees. Filings “the size of a cord of wood” don’t come cheap. As all the growers who’d thrown their weight behind the protest suddenly got cold feet, the two Earth mothers — Bosk & Cattalini — ran out of wiggle room. So in February of 1997, they cut a deal with LP.

ONE TINY THING that Bosk and Cattalini should’ve read before doing that is called “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Coleridge. Where a sailor is punished for killing an albatross by wearing the dead bird’s carcass around his neck. Well, that’s exactly what Bosk & Cattalini got. Something they’ll be wearing for a long, long time.

THAT SETTLEMENT transferred three prime pieces of timberland to the two women. One heavily wooded piece known as ‘Raven’s Call.’ A piece of marshland known as ‘Enchanted Meadow.’ And a third connecting the two named for Cattalini’s father, Albert. None of them have a road, nor are they ever likely to. The entire property was landlocked by LP. Meaning that it’s a true wildlife sanctuary. And something that Bosk & Cattalini had to start paying insurance and property taxes on.

NECESSITY is the mother of invention — so they got creative. Bosk dropped the ‘Enchanted Meadow’ property like a hot rock onto the Coastal Land Trust. Who in turn dumped it on Claudia Cattalini. She saw forming a nonprofit corporation as the perfect way to avoid paying taxes. Thus in October of 2001 — harvest time — she did just that. Sort of.

RUNNING A CORPORATION requires paperwork. Especially when it’s a nonprofit. The State of California requires filings called an Annual Renewal Fee Report every year along with a $25 filing fee. The IRS requires a Form 990 as well. That requires an accountant — and even more money. In addition there are late fees. And that’s on top of insurance and property taxes. You get the picture. Well, Claudia didn’t.

THAT APPEARS to have slipped Cattalini’s mind. Prompting Jerry Brown to send her a little reminder on August 23, 2014. Requesting five years worth of paperwork and all fees associated with that. That was something Ms. Cattalini could’t afford to ignore. So she dug into her pocket — again — and coughed everything up. Then financed it all with a raffle.

WHEN DIGGING YOURSELF into a hole, the first rule is to stop digging. Claudia has yet to figure that out. Raffles in the Golden State require even more paperwork. Especially when you advertise them on your website. Uh-huh. That’s what Cattalini did. So Jerry Brown sent her another notice. To either register — or face the music from the local District Attorney. Cattalini responded with a delinquent registration application for the year ending August 31, 2016. That application was declined in a letter dated August 2, 2017.

FOEM’S OUTLAW RAFFLE was held on February 20, 2016. Cattalini’s website declared it a success and said that the proceeds would pay for insurance and property taxes into late 2017. And if anything was left over, she promised to focus on completing a trail from the “Enchanted Meadow” all the way to “Raven’s Call.” Translation: after 25 years of promises, there’s still no public access to Cattalini’s property.

IRONICALLY, Cattalini finds herself in a position today where she really needs to log that property — but can’t. The only road is on the piece named after her father. But it’s blocked by downed trees. Claudia reported, “This cleanup will involve chainsaws and we hope to use the salvaged wood for fundraising.” Good luck with that idea, Claudia.

IF BY SOME MIRACLE Cattalini could actually get logging equipment into that property, there’s still the issue of tree spiking to deal with. Twenty-five years of natural growth has long covered any trace of where they might’ve been hidden. And the minute somebody fires up a chainsaw in “Raven’s Call” — well — watch out for the neighbors, Claudia.

JERRY PHILBRICK had nothing but kind words for Judi Bari. “I went to visit her when she got sick,” he said. “She died four days later.” Jerry told me he even offered to brew some tea out of madrone bark to make her feel better. Philbrick was hospitalized recently too. “We almost lost him,” his wife Terri recalled. That made me wonder if Beth Bosk ever visited Philbrick while he was in the hospital — or if she ever sent him a card. Terri responded lickety-split. “Beth Bosk did not visit him,” she said. “Not a peep.”

Story Index

CATCH OF THE DAY, September 1, 2017

KENNETH ADDOR, Talmage. DUI.

MICHAEL BLAHUT, Redwood Valley. DUI, misdemeanor hit&run, possession of tear gas, resisting.

ASHLEY DARLINGTON, Santa Rosa. Failure to appear.

MARIO HERNANDEZ-VILLALVA, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. DUI.

DEVIN KESTER-TYLER, Ukiah. Trespassing, under influence, failure to appear, probation revocation.

WILLIAM LASKEY, Santa Cruz/Ukiah. Probation revocation.

LAFAYETTE ROBINSON JR., Oakland. Probation revocation.

DAMION SANCHEZ, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

THOMAS WILLIAMS, Redwood Valley. Inflicting injury upon a child, disobeying court order.

A HOT MESS

by James Kunstler

It wasn’t until more than a week after Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans in 2005 that the full extent of the damage was recognized and so it will go with the hot mess where Houston used to be. Mostly, it is inconceivable that the business activity which made Houston the nation’s fourth largest city and, according to Chris Martenson, equal to the 10^th largest economy in the world, will ever return to what it was before August 26, 2017.

The major activity there has been the refining and distribution of oil products, and no activity is more central to the functioning of the US economy. So the public and our currently clueless leaders across the political spectrum, plus a legacy news media lost in the carnival of race and gender freak shows, is about to discover the dynamic relationship between energy and an industrial economy.

The pivot in this relationship is banking, which enables the conversion of oil’s raw power into everything else that goes on in a so-called advanced economy. The popular assumption is that federal disaster relief can compensate for all losses. That assumption may go out the window with the Houston flood of 2017. And no amount of federal aid can compensate for the hours, days, and weeks that will tick by as businesses struggle to return to something like their former level of normal operation.

Many businesses will never recover, especially the smaller ones that support the big one — the little tool and die shops, the construction outfits, the trucking and shipping concerns, the riggers and pipefitters, the cement companies, and so on. All of that activity existed in highly rationalized chains of on-time production and service and nothing will be on-time in Houston for a long time to come. The arguments over insurance coverage have not even begun, and then there is the question of how businesses in this perpetual flood zone will renew their insurance. Or how might they relocate to higher ground? And how do they pay for that? And where is higher ground in this vast, swampy lowland?

The public has been conditioned by frequent natural disasters to think that nobody has to eat the losses, so that in effect loss doesn’t exist, just as the nation’s central bank has engineered the belief that risk no longer exists in the management of capital. We sure had a nice demonstration of the latter, with the Dow inching over the 22,000 hashmark in overnight futures trading today. The exertions of the Federal Reserve in propping up the stock markets will have to go pedal-to-metal now to make up for the hole in economic activity that Houston represents.

Meanwhile congress is left to dither over two conjoined financial emergencies at once: authorizing emergency aid to Houston, and resolving the debt ceiling problem. The fault lines are already visible in the ill-feeling left over from Texas’s congressional delegation voting against aid for Hurricane Sandy’s rip through New York and New Jersey. Texas Senator Ted Cruz, for one, has reinvented his political philosophy overnight to accommodate federal aid for natural disasters, something he was not keen on before September 26.

I’d assume that these politicians have some normal human sympathies — yes, really — but that these emotions won’t stand in the way of their agenda for mutual self-destruction. Even if they manage to cobble together some kind of emergency aid package for Houston, the process will coincide with the Treasury running out of supposedly “actual” money — that is, money which can be accounted for by some method besides check-kiting. Another assumption du jour is probably the idea that accounting no longer matters, that bankruptcy no longer means anything. Pretty soon, those logical fallacies will manifest in an accelerated falling value of the US dollar.

Somewhere in this reverberating hot mess stands a character named President Trump. He acted out the customary disaster visitation ceremony last week, but I predict that the as-yet-revealed after-effects of Hurricane Harvey will put him in deeper and stinkier hot water than George W. Bush splashed through with Katrina.

Meanwhile, what’s that monster called Irma doing out there in the Atlantic?

(Support Kunstler’s writing by visiting his Patreon Page: https://www.patreon.com/JamesHowardKunstler)

THIS IS NOT A TIME for some misguided idea of what is polite and what is appropriate about what we can talk about in the midst of a disaster. You hear this from a lot of journalists, that they don’t want to politicize a human catastrophe by talking about climate change, which they know is a controversial subject, although it really should not be, especially in the midst of a storm that they’re saying, over and over and over again, is unprecedented. I mean, you turn on any coverage, and you hear that word over and over again, but what you don’t hear, or you hear very, very rarely, is an explanation for why the word "unprecedented," "record-breaking" — why these words have become, you know, meteorological clichés. We hear them all the time, because we’re breaking heat records year after year. We’re seeing record-breaking wildfires, record-breaking droughts, record-breaking storms, because the baseline is higher.

So, nobody is saying that climate change caused this storm. What we’re talking about are what are the superchargers of this storm, the accelerants that took what would have been a disaster, in any situation, and turned it into this human catastrophe. One of those chargers, one of those accelerants, is climate change. Another, as we heard from Bryan, is the presence of this highly unregulated, toxic industry that is so unevenly distributed, with communities of color bearing the greatest risks. Another accelerant is poverty. I mean, if you don’t have the ability to organize your own evacuation because you don’t have a car, then you’re stuck. Another one is racism. If you are an immigrant and you want to get to dry land, but you’re hearing that the border checkpoints are staying open everywhere where the highway isn’t flooded, as we showed at The Intercept, then you are not — you are less likely to seek safety. So these are accelerants to a disaster that would have happened anyway.

And it’s the job of journalism to provide key facts and context for people to understand their world. And without these contexts, particularly without a fulsome discussion of climate change, without hearing from people like James Hansen, who we’re about to hear from here, then it seems like an act of God. It seems like it came from nowhere. And if that’s the case, well, then we’re going to avoid a discussion of who—what could have been done to prevent this, which is a very important discussion to have. And we’re also not going to talk about what we can still do to lower emissions very, very rapidly to prevent a future filled with many more such megastorms and other climate-accelerated disasters.

(Naomi Klein)

DOWNTOWN DENIZENS IN SAN FRANCISCO

by Eric Sinclair McMahon (July 1998)

Every fortnight in the San Francisco Chronicle publishes something deceptively branded a "magazine." Before they achieve their monopoly, said pamphlet was a weekly. Go figure.

Overall, we are talking sorry product, particularly in a city with a (literal) embarrassment of journalistic talent. Travel book excerpts, bridal gown fashions spreads, wine country getaway advertorials.

Delivering the final insult, editors opted to devote four to six pages each addition to "The Circuit," comprising captioned photos of well tailored, moneyed, libation-lifting Pacific Heights swells, having a grand time — and assisting the less fortunate — at charitable events.

One quixotic pro still single-handedly strives to save this rag from becoming unopened fish wrap: Sam Whiting, slick yet down-home scribe who produces a regular feature, "Neighborhoods" (in the mid- to late-90s).

Whiting hooks up with genuine locals and takes tours of their turf. The result is genially entertaining, proving again the value of Herb Caen’s journalistic approach.

Step away from your desk, pound a little pavement, shoot shit, and chew rag among real folks.

Whiting's Financial District piece, running one mid-December, remained dependably engaging, sneaking in some historical trivia as a bonus.

What it overlooked — and hey, no criticism intended, Sam, you're valiantly bailing out one woeful book — was the eccentrics who make that small piece of real estate their lifelong home.

Montgomery isn't Wall Street, but where it meets Market and heading north toward California you’ve got some significant pedestrian traffic on workdays.

Population density, always attracts loons, buffoons, goons and zealots with an axe to grind.

For years, a mad evangelist hunkered above the main entrance to the Montgomery BART station, robotically reciting a fresh, lunatic phrase each day (since relocated to the California Street cable car terminus). "CIA kidnapped Eisenhower’s golf clubs,” was one of my favorites, among his mantras.

He’d stare blankly, repeating the current thesis urgently, maniacally, incessantly.

Lately, anyone who works in the area will nod if you ask whether they've spotted "Impeach Guy." An Asian-American with thick glasses, even thicker shoe-soles, and synthetic navy blazers several sizes too small, Impeach Guy hauls ass back and forth along downtown sidewalks, toting a protest sign.

Initially, he simply promoted impeachment of Presidents; not those in power, but those retired or dead.

Truman endured the wrath of Impeach Guy, as did Hoover, Grant and even Hayes.

Soon, he sought recalls of streets: IMPEACH VAN NESS, for example.

About that time, he earned the status of "local character," like those elegantly turned out, elderly identical twins. Confirmation arrived when Impeach Guy costumes appeared on impostors come Halloween.

When last seen, our man had gone intergalactic, warning his fellow citizens about extraterrestrial wrongdoing. The true San Fran punchline, however, is that Impeach Guy lured sponsors. Ads for such enterprises as Rasputin Records have shown up on the non-hortatory side of his placard (a throwback to days of "Eat at Joe's" sandwich boards).

Virtually all blocks, corners of each intersection, have been staked out by career panhandlers. There is the platinum coiffed, patchouli-saturated woman on Sansome; Camouflage Suit Dude, who paints his dachshund’s paw-nails, on Bush; the hunched, allegedly disabled "veteran" on Fremont.

Let's not forget Professor Profanity, near Citicorp at the foot of Sutter. He sprawls full-length, one desiccated palm extended and cupped. If you don't grease it, he unleashes a blast of obscene rant and demonically insulting recommendations.

I passed him up one evening, and he rasped, "You cock-sucking motherfucking pissant, try tugging twin dicks in hell."

That captured my attention, and I walked back. "You know, that might not be great for repeat business," I told him.

"Like I give a rat's ass," he elaborated. "Why don't you blow me and eat shit in your ex-wife's backyard?"

He received a dollar for that performance, not that I got thanked.

Of all the whacked out personages who haunt the Financial District, I find two especially confounding.

First is the entrepreneur whom without fail has a carton of folding umbrellas for sale on bright, clear afternoons. ("It will rain again," he assures passersby.) He did a 180 once, featuring sunglasses during a downpour.

The other is a slender septuagenarian, invariably draped in khaki trench coat, sporting matching stingy-brim. He conceals a tiny pad in his left hand, and, gazing fixedly at office tower facades opposite, squints, scrolling miniscule notations.

I've tried to glance over his shoulder. I spied on him from down the block. Not once has he surrendered a clue regarding his research or motivation. Certainly, he could have catalogued and counted those bricks many times over by now, yet his assignment is not complete.

For me, and many others, that's what downtown San Francisco is all about. We often exchange directions in code. Turn left at Patchouli Lady. When you see the pedicured dachshund, next door is the place with good espresso.

LOOMING GAS SHORTAGE: “IMPORTS CAN’T MAKE UP FOR THIS”

oilprice.com/Energy/Gas-Prices/Looming-Gas-Shortage-Imports-Cant-Make-Up-For-This.html

“The East Coast will start feeling the effects of Hurricane Harvey as the gasoline supplied from the Gulf Coast starts to dry up. One of the most important pipelines that ships refined products to the Eastern Seaboard shut down on Thursday, which means that the U.S. Southeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Northeast could see supply disruptions and price increases.

“The Colonial Pipeline carries gasoline, diesel and jet fuel from several refineries in Houston, Port Arthur and Lake Charles, along the Texas and Louisiana Coast, up through the U.S. Southeast to Washington DC, Baltimore, and New Jersey.

“The pipeline had been operational through the worst of the Hurricane, easing fears about supply disruptions. But the outages at the nation’s top refineries along the Gulf Coast have forced the Colonial Pipeline company to announce on Wednesday that it was shutting down Line 2, which carries diesel and jet fuel due to ‘supply constraints.’ And on Thursday, the company shuttered Line 1, the pipeline that carries gasoline. The pipeline company said that operations would only resume when it can ‘ensure that its facilities are safe to operate and refiners in Lake Charles and points east have the ability to move product to Colonial.’

“It is hard to overstate the critical role that the Colonial Pipeline plays. It carries 2.5 million barrels of refined products per day, or as the FT notes, ‘roughly one in every eight barrels of fuel consumed in the country.’ More importantly, it is one of the only suppliers for major cities on the eastern seaboard, including New York, Washington DC and Atlanta.”

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

My one visit to Houston, where I admit I ate well and bought some cool boots, was tinged by the realization that “this screwed up place is doomed.”

They just paved over everything and the water had nowhere to go. Most US metro areas are like that, but nothing rivals what I saw in Houston. The Enron building was still there, then, too, another great symbol of US short-sightedness.

Meanwhile, Irma? We are overdue for another hit in the Mid-Atlantic States. The last one featured me loading every firearm and sitting near an oil lamp while on a major thoroughfare nearby, bikers raced at 100mph and fired guns. We heard a few full-auto bursts that second night, before the cops resumed control.

Just wait until the year in the not-too-distant future, when a warming Atlantic spawns five direct hits on the Gulf or East Coasts.

New Orleans should have been the canary in the coal mine. Instead, we just keep killing the poor birds.

I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN A LAUGHER, disturbing people who are not laughers, upsetting whole audiences at theatres ... I laugh, that's all.  I love to laugh.  Laughter to me is being alive.  I have had rotten times, and I have laughed through them.  Even in the midst of the very worst times, I have laughed.

— William Saroyan, 1976; from "Sons Come and Go, Mothers Hang In Forever"

NORMA WATKINS’ NEW MEMOIR COMES OUT TODAY!

She writes: "I will celebrate here on the Coast Sunday, October 8, 4 pm, Abalone Room at the Little River Inn. The reading is sponsored by Gallery Bookshop and book sales benefit the Scholarship Fund at the Mendocino Coast Writers' Conference. This book is set in Miami. We'll try rum punch and Cuban snacks. Save the Date!”

See more at:<http://normatalksaboutwriting.wordpress.com>

email: <watkins.norma@gmail.com>

DIE-IN AT ASSEMBLYMAN WOOD'S OFFICE For SB 562, The Healthy California Act

California can lead the nation in providing basic healthcare. The Healthy California Act, SB 562, passed the Senate but is stalled in the Assembly. Let’s message Assemblyman Wood for the bill to proceed to debate.  Come join one of 3 simultaneous Die-Ins in front of his district offices in Ukiah, Santa Rosa and Eureka.  Noon, Wednesday, September 13 at 200 South State Street in Ukiah.  Come dressed to die or in funeral attire. See you there!

Robin Sunbeam

CANNABIS HOUR PROGRAM CHANGE FOR SEPT. 7:

A countywide cannabis career fair in Willits? Karen Byars of Mendocino Cannabis Resource will talk about the job fair she’s organized for late September on the next Cannabis Hour, Thurs., Sept. 7, 9 a.m, on KZYX/Mendocino County Public Broadcasting. The fair is the first of its kind in the county, designed to connect emerging cannabusinesses and prospective employees.

(Host Jane Futcher's scheduled guest, attorney Hannah Nelson, had to cancel.)

SATURDAY ACTORS WORKSHOP

Dan Kozloff's popular workshop is a drop-in acting class for actors (or wannabe actors) of all levels, from beginning to advanced. The fall session will run for twelve weeks, ending on Nov. 18th  Over the weeks, students will be introduced to the six plays of Mendocino Theatre Company’s 2018 season and will practice working on their particular challenges. The session will conclude with a Student Showcase Performance on the MTC stage!  The classes meet from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the MTC rehearsal room (in the Community Center of Mendocino, on School St. — the room in the main building nearest the baseball field) every Saturday.  Suggested donation is $10 for each class. Students ages 12 and over are welcome, regardless of experience or ability to pay.  Come find your inner thespian, in a safe and supportive environment!

<mendotheatreco@gmail.com>

DIXIELAND MUSIC IN FORT BRAGG THIS SUNDAY

The Dixie Devils will be playing at Fort Bragg's Eagles Hall, N. Corry & Alder, Sunday, Sept 3, from 4 to 7PM, $15 a head.  No host bar and snacks available. Eagles Hall has one of the best dance floors on the coast and the Devils are great to dance to.